Contents

Productions[edit]

Venus in Fur opened Off-Broadway at the Classic Stage Company on January 13, 2010. The play was originally set to close on February 21, 2010, and was extended to March 7, 2010. The cast featured Nina Arianda and Wes Bentley with direction by Walter Bobbie.[1] The play relaunched the career of Wes Bentley.[2][3][4][5]

The play opened on Broadway, produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre beginning in previews on October 13, 2011, and officially on November 8, 2011. Nina Arianda reprised her role as Vanda and Hugh Dancy replaced Wes Bentley, with Walter Bobbie directing. The production ended its limited engagement at the Friedman on December 18 and resumed performances at the Lyceum Theatre on February 7, 2012, in a limited engagement through June 17, 2012.[6][7][8] The Broadway production received two Tony Award nominations, including for Best Play and Best Actress in a Play.

Plot[edit]

Thomas Novachek is the writer-director of a new play, an adaptation of the 1870 novel Venus in Furs by Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, which inspired the term Masochism. He is on the telephone lamenting the inadequacies of all the actresses who showed up that day to audition for the lead character, Wanda von Dunayev.[10][11] Suddenly, at the last minute, a new actress, Vanda Jordan, bursts in, the exemplar of every fault he has decried: needy, crude, compliant, desperate. She convinces him to read through his play, she as Wanda and he as Severin von Kushemski.[10][12] During this reading, Vanda shows astonishing insights into the novel and her character and the balance of power shifts as the actress establishes total dominance over the director, exactly as in the novel.

Other nominations were the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Director and Outstanding Costume Design (Anita Yavich),[14] the Drama League Award for Distinguished Production of a Play, and the Tony Award for Best Play.[15]